After GOP Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin’s controversial remarks on a local network yesterday – claiming that women were unlikely to get pregnant from rape because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down” – many national Republican leaders, including Gov. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, distanced themselves from Akin.

One defender? Kirk Cameron. The child-star-turned-evangelist was on CNN this morning discussing the remarks, and Cameron encouraged people to watch the whole video (which you can here) and then said, “[Akin] is clearly a pro-life advocate and I respect him. He said that he misspoke and that he misphrased something and that he apologized.”

Rep. Akin released a statement after the interview saying he “misspoke,” but hasn’t backed away from his remarks. Despite calls on Akin to get out of the Missouri Senate race, so far he’s staying in.

“I’m the kind of person that believes that I would like to be evaluated by my entire career and my entire life, not two words that I would misspeak and then later apologize for,” Cameron told CNN. “So he’s in a tough spot.”